XT660R Heaven

Life on the road is fab...

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

California - The Lost Coast

We had a steady ride down to Eureka this morning to get brake pads for both mine & Geoff's bikes, the current versions are almost metal on metal with the discs! No luck though, both the Yamaha & KTM dealers were out of that type of pad. hey ho, keep riding south & use the brakes less!!

Once out of Eureka we turned off the 101 & headed into Ferndale, a lovely little Victorian town with some fab buildings & most importantly the find of the day, Poppa Joes cafe... now this is how all cafés should be!

Fab breakfast, great coffee, full of local characters, ace place...

Once we'd ate our fill we set off heading onto the Mattole Road, which is a bit of a classic ride for this area, it sweeps through several valleys & drops you onto the Pacific Coast for a few miles before climbing back into the hills near Petrolia, which was apparently founded as this was the first place oil was found in the States. Nowadays it's a sleepy hollow, with beautiful scenery everywhere.

We climbed over a pass & dropped to the Humbolt Redwood Forest to camp at the Albee Creek campground which has a regular visiting schedule from the local black bear population to munch on the apple trees in the nearby pasture, needless to say everything goes into a bear proof box whilst camping here!!!

It finally got warm & sunny today too, so all the layers came off on our last bit of the ride... another cool day to be on a motorbike!!

Our evening finished with a ride through the Avenue of the Giants, a little bit of road just off the 101, which has some of the oldest & biggest trees in this area, wow!! a bit of dinner at the Eternal Tree cafe in Redcrest & back down the Avenue to get back to camp & the bottle of JD!!